Tweaking early sidequest difficulty

#1

I worry a little that players coming in at high levels (38 - 40) to New Game+ will find the first 2 - 3 acts pretty trivial, even on Extreme. There’s not too much I can do about that with the way the system is built, but I can definitely mess around with the first few side quests to keep things more interesting. The “Normal” versions of the side quests are already tougher than the other nearby levels, but I think I’m gonna bump up the difficulty a bit on Advanced and Extreme to at least throw a few curve balls to players. I’m going to bump up the difficulties of Advanced and Hard on most of the side quests for the next release. I’ll do some testing on my end, but when it comes out let me know if I tweaked anything too far (i.e. if at level 45 - 50 you can’t beat Advanced, and at 55 - 60 you can’t beat Extreme).

Along those lines, how are players who are starting close to level 40 (or maybe even higher) for NG+ about the difficulty? I expect the first 2 acts to be quick and easy, but when do you start having to really think? When are you not able to play the Extreme levels right away any more?

On a related note, does anyone have a legit (or fairly legit) nearly maxed (or maxed) game? I can create one, but I’d rather use one that is more naturally created if someone has one. If you’re willing, just attach it to a reply here. I can use that to help test high-level difficulty more accurately.

#2

I’m sorry to ask, but what’s the point in this?

Back when we discussed balance I told you that the way the game is built, NG+ can be entered at levels anywhere between 16 (linear play), 25-30 (all gold stars) and 40 (cap) - and unless you want to do scaling (which you don’t), no matter what you do with the game difficulty, almost every player will have stages of “way too easy”, “just fine” and “oh shit I need to head back and grind like mad”.

Making the side quests in NG+ tougher means that you’re basically telling any nongrinder “sorry, we don’t cater for your style of play. Now go grind and return to those sidequests when your party is level 40+”. Why?

I think that you should pick a target audience and tailor the difficulty for them - do not try to please everyone as it will backfire. It seems obvious to me that level 25-30 after beating Normal game is going to be the most-common one, as more or less everybody will want to get their hands on the powerful uniques plus bonus rewards before delving into NG+. So make the game good for them. If somebody beats the game, then spends 10+ levels grinding and then complains that NG+ is too easy for them, they have themselves to blame after all. (And if somebody tries to make a run through the game, as much as I like that play style, I can accept that we asked to have it tough.

#3

Here’s my nearly maxed savefile.

Edit: Or not. It says 'dfq extension not allowed.

#4

+1 to coyot.

You really shouldn’t change that, can’t please everyone ^^

What you could do is putting an additional thing to the Options screen that overall increases the difficulty (like all creeps have 50% - 200% more hp or something around that line). If the game is to easy for the grinders, they can just increase the difficulty, or vice versa if the game is to difficult for the non grinders who don’t want to grind, they can decrease the hp of all creeps by 50% or something like that.

I already liked the idea that the grinding “speed” can be changed via options (50% to 300%), so y not make the same for an additional difficulty option?

That way you can design the games for a specific setting (all to 100%) and choose for example medium grinders (who try to get most gold stars, but not go to the cap).
That way everyone can be happy without you having to mess with the Levels and potentially make things worse instead of better.

Just my 2 cents.

#5

coyot & Yinan - I agree that you can’t please everyone. However, it is not “grinding” when you just have to come back later after playing more levels. It’s non-linear, sure, but “grinding” is when you have to beat the same levels over and over again to get up to a proper level to do something. If you’re finding that you’re having to play levels over and over then perhaps things are too hard. If you just have to come back later I have no problem with that, and in fact that’s the intent. It already works like that on the normal mode - you can’t play the Extreme difficulty without coming back later. I don’t have my spreadsheet available right now, but my recollection is that a pure play-through of all difficulties will get you to somewhere around level 50 with zero grinding.

What I’m doing is providing some little spurts of challenge along the earlier part of the map to players who were high level coming in. I did not change the Normal difficulty on any of the maps. I did bump up the Advanced difficulty by 4 - 6 levels on the first 4 side quests, and the Extreme difficulty by 10 - 12 levels. I didn’t change side quests 5 or 6, though I did bump 7 up a bit (which I’ll need to do some testing on to make sure it’s still feasible, but 7 is sort of a new “boss” in the game and I’m fine having it take some more effort). The side quests are exclusive to NG+, so it makes sense that they might provide some unique challenges to even higher level players, and I have the flexibility to scale them differently since they don’t appear in the standard game. (Also, none of this is live until the next build)

Hollow - sorry about that! I think I’ve fixed it now so that .dfq files can be attached. Whoops, haha!

#6

I’ll be the first to admit 7 had to be changed… I beat it on the first attempt before he made it more then like 15% across the track. The only part that really fucked me was when he spawned porcupine guys and I had no archers up

#7

IanIanIan - was that on the extreme difficulty? What level were your characters? I bumped the enemy levels from 60 to 75, so they have a bunch more HP, but if he only got 15% through that likely won’t be enough.

#8

Anthony, I’m 2 stars short on the first game and halfway though NG+ and I’m barely level 35. I think your memory might be off.

#9

I have like 5 normal game levels I haven’t beaten (meaning, 5 Advanced/Extreme), and when I entered NG+, o was 35, but it was hard after Act 1ish.

#10

Hell, I cheated at 300% exp for a while until act four because I lost my save. I have 112 gold stars, almost everything in normal game now done(super sheep killed, got all the unique stuff aside from a few books), and am on the sheep level in NG+. Slak just hit level 37.

#11

Here’s my save file, everyone nearly at max level and nearly max stars, with the good ending not done.

Edit: Or not. Again when I tried to submit: The extension dfq is not allowed.

#12

I found it pretty fun curb stomping the early levels. The optional extra side quests were hard enough, even at high levels, to give me some challenge.

#13

Argh - now I think you should be able to submit a .dfq file. -_-

My memory was not wrong, and in fact was a bit low - by my spreadsheet (which admittedly could be wrong, even if my memory isn’t), you should be level 54 once you complete all 201 stars. Completing the regular game at 100% puts you at just hitting level 31. Starting at level 31, completing NG+ at 100% puts you at level 54. Again, that’s 100% completion, not just getting through Normal or Advanced. So having 112 gold stars and being at level 37 sounds about right to me. You’ve still got 89 stars to go. :slight_smile:

So maybe I should just leave the difficulties as-is. I was worried people would find it boring, but if you guys, who actually have been playing the game and higher-level accounts, aren’t bothered by it, then new people just starting the regular game are very unlikely to mind it. I think I’ll revert them, except for the final Side Quest guy, who really was too easy for a high level party. Thanks for the feedback everyone!

#14

ah, that makes more sense! I thought you were expecting us to be 50 at the end of a normal game. Sorry if I sounded offensive.

I found the first side quest on normal pretty hard while I was still 30-33 and without new weapons.

#15

Now here is my savefile. :slight_smile:

Guess what characters I don’t use a lot.

#16

Thanks Hollow! Sorry for the attachment issues - I now know how to enable new attachments in phpBB. :slight_smile: This will be very helpful when testing out the high-end content in the game to make sure stuff is feasible without being too easy. How have you felt the difficulty was? Was it engaging and challenging, or just too easy at the high levels?

Yeah, sorry Laureola, I guess I was a bit unclear. A normal playthrough on the regular game will get you to about level 20 (coyot got it down lower than that, but he’s actually a robot and can play the game far better than normal humans). I’ve aimed NG+ to be accessible in more like the level 28 - 30 range, which is representative of finishing most of the standard game. The thought is that if you’re want to play NG+, you want to play more of the game, and therefore it’s reasonable to expect you to have played most of the standard game. This is in opposition to the idea that minimal (and in fact no) grinding is required to get through the story on Normal (and maybe occasionally Casual) difficulty, but I’m okay with that. Two different types of players, and I think both are served fairly well.

So yeah - good feedback everyone. As a designer we do our best to pick the best answers to problems, and sometimes we have to debate with our players, but when everyone reacts negatively that’s a good clue that maybe it wasn’t the best idea. :slight_smile: With the exception of the final side quest, none of the side quests should change in the next version.

#17

I just tried to get my first Obsidian Skull and got my butt whooped by thorn damage on the first Zeph fight. I think I found the challenge!

#18

Do you have to add the EXP% to more than 100% to get Lv60?

#19

I’ve died or gotten hit several times with going for Extreme difficulty on a couple of levels, so there’s still a bit of challenge there. I ended up going Casual / Normal just to breeze through some of the harder levels and check out new content, but I’ll go back to the older levels and have another crack at them again.

What would you say the best books are? I tried equipping the lightning ones, but one sets the PSI cost to 30 and the other sets it to 90, making lightning no longer useful as a desperation spell, so I abandoned them.

#20

— Begin quote from "Hollow"

What would you say the best books are? I tried equipping the lightning ones, but one sets the PSI cost to 30 and the other sets it to 90, making lightning no longer useful as a desperation spell, so I abandoned them.

— End quote

Depends on the level, really. But, I agree, the Lightning cost becomes waaaayyy too high.